Beginning on December 27th, 2021, 14 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.2 to 3.6 occurred over a three-week period in the town of Elgin, approximately 20 miles northeast of Columbia, capital of South Carolina, USA. Since then, there has been a succession of 1-3 magnitude seismic events in the area, with swarms of earthquakes continuing to this day. In mid-October 2022, a team of researchers and students from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of South Carolina deployed 86 SmartSolo seismic nodes in Elgin to monitor nearby seismic swarms.

The SmartSolo sensors are compact, lightweight, easy to operate and rugged enough to be quickly deployed near the epicenter of a swarm of earthquakes. The nodes can help identify the source of disturbances beneath the Earth’s surface, allowing researchers to more accurately understand the location of the epicenter of each earthquake, as well as the fault generation and spatial and temporal evolution of the earthquake. We expect researchers to use the highly reliable data recorded by SmartSolo to solve the mystery of the Elgin swarm seismic event!

News Link：https://www.postandcourier.com/columbia/news/georgia-tech-usc-researchers-launch-study-of-elgin-earthquakes/article_3218999c-4f14-11ed-858f-373333b68708.html

By Jessica Holdman jholdman@postandcourier.com